B Larson - Spyware

He drove at the limits of safety and just beyond, moving fast and illegally, skirting every delay, but not quite recklessly enough to get himself hit. Fortunately, there were no cops on the route to stop him. If there had been, he wondered what he would have done.

When he came skidding around the corner, he was disturbed to see only one cop car out in front of the house. Didn’t they care more than that? Vaguely, it occurred to him that most of the police should be out cruising around looking for signs of Justin, but somehow he wanted more response than this.

He jumped the curb and stopped the car on the lawn, heedless of the black swathes he cut in his well-groomed grass. The door opened as he got to the steps.

“Ray!” said Sarah, reaching out for him. He hugged her and bent down over her small body, pressing it up against him. He didn’t ask if they had found Justin yet. It was obvious that they hadn’t. He knew she didn’t want to say anything. It was a connection the two of them had always had, knowing when the other wanted to talk and when all that was needed was a hug or a light, supportive touch.

A black man in a clean-cut, but not expensive, brown sports jacket followed Sarah out of the house more slowly. He had a notepad and a pen in his hand, reminding Ray of the FBI agents back at the university. He hoped the man wasn’t FBI. He had had quite enough of them already today.

The man nodded to Ray. “Afternoon, Dr. Vance. I’m Detective Waterson.”

Ray put his chin down on Sarah’s head. He smelled her perfume. It brought back a flash of good memories. Then he looked up and faced the Detective.

“Have you turned up anything?”

“No sir, but we are searching and we are hopeful. Oftentimes these things turn out to be nothing more than a misunderstanding. Can I ask you some questions?”

Ray smiled weakly. He had been questioned to death by people in suits all day. “Shoot.”

Waterson nodded. “We’ve already talked to the teachers and staff at the school where he was last seen. Apparently, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary. You were the one to drop him off this morning, correct?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t seen him since?”

“No.”

“Did he seem upset?”

“Only about his shoes,” said Ray. Suddenly, his voice choked up.

“What? His shoes?”

Ray shook his head, unable to answer for a moment. Sarah’s arms squeezed him around the middle, feeling his emotion.

“He never likes to put on his shoes in the morning. It’s a ritual battle we have to fight every day.”

Waterson frowned and made a note. “I see.”

Ray realized that Waterson probably didn’t have kids, and that he didn’t see at all. Why would the police have someone without kids on this case? It seemed wrong somehow. Everything seemed wrong today.

“Did you punish him this morning, or last night? Is there any reason that he might run away?”

Ray shook his head. “No special reason. Do you think he might have?”

Waterson shrugged. “It’s hard to say. It’s rare for a six-year-old to take off on his own for long, but not unheard of. Dr. Vance, you were the one who was supposed to pick him up, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but… I was detained. He’s supposed to go next door if I’m not back from the university yet. We have an arrangement.”

“With the Trumbles, yes, I understand that. Do you have any relatives or friends who might have picked him up since there was no one home to meet him?”

“No, I don’t think so. Look, I think I should be out looking for him instead of answering all these questions. If we knew anything, then we would be trying these possibilities.”

“In times of stress, Dr. Vance, we sometimes forget or overlook things. It’s my job to make sure that we cover everything.”

“But I should be out looking for him.”

Detective Waterson looked at him. “Where would you look, Dr. Vance?”

Ray opened his mouth and blinked. He realized he didn’t know where to start. He thought of the park and the school grounds, but that was no good if he had been kidnapped. He thought of all the highways and houses and orchards and quiet fields in the area. Where would he begin? Was Justin tied up and on his way to L.A.? Was he somewhere in the central valley right now? It was maddening to think that if he only knew exactly where his son was right then, he could go and get him. For the lack of that single fact, he was helpless.

He dropped his chin down again to rest atop Sarah’s fresh-smelling hair. He closed his eyes and tried not to cry himself.

Justin reached out a shaky hand and grabbed the thin steel bars of the cage. They were almost too thin to call bars, but were definitely too thick to call wire, because they wouldn’t bend. They looked about like the bars of a shopping cart, all shiny and crisscrossed in small squares.

The Van Man had told him not to mess with the cage-well, actually, the man had used the F-word, but Justin avoided even thinking that bad word. Mom always said that bad things happened to boys with dirty mouths, and he certainly didn’t need any more bad things to happen to him now. He dared to touch the bars now because he figured there was no way that the van man could see him.

The inside of the van was gross. Dirt and grease caked everything. The torn-up parts of what looked like a motorcycle lay everywhere on the scratched metal floor. Coffee-cans overflowed with cigarette butts and the whole place stank of sweat and pee.

Justin strained to see the Van Man. He was up there, past a short dirty curtain that swayed and fluttered in the breeze that came in from the open driver side window. Occasionally, when the curtain flapped the right way, Justin could see the Van Man’s head and shoulders. He was smoking again. He seemed to smoke continuously. Through the dirty windshield, Justin could just make out that they were on the highway. From the roar of the engine and road noises, he could have figured out that much anyway.

Justin looked around his cage speculatively. It was welded to the side of the van so that only three sides were actually barred. The top opened, he knew that because that’s how the Van Man had shoved him down into it.

Looking at the cage, Justin thought of a story his father had told him about a chimpanzee in a cage. A group of pyscho-ologists (as his father had called them) had specially built the cage with sixteen ways to escape, depending on what the chimp did. There were blocks to stack, ropes to climb and pull, all sorts of things. All the psycho-ologists had watched closely with a TV camera, and the chimp had indeed escaped, but he had used the seventeenth way, the way that none of them had even thought of.

Justin grabbed the shiny bars and gave them a shake. He needed just one way out of this cage.

The van slowed. Justin lurched against the bars as it made a sweeping turn. He knew that feeling, the van was exiting the highway. Justin huddled back against the wheel well that served as a bench in the makeshift cage. His eyes grew wide with terror. Somehow, the Van Man must have seen him shake the cage. He clasped his hands together, stuck them between his knees and squeezed them tightly. He sucked at his lower lip and shivered, even though it was very hot in the sun-baked van.

Casey Spurlock swung off I-80 and pulled the van to a stop at a Circle-K convenience store in Fairfield. After checking the kid, who looked scared enough to piss himself, he dug out one of those prepaid cell phones he had lifted and stockpiled for just this occasion. These phones had only so many minutes on them, and you had to buy more minutes on cards to use them again. This was a perfect arrangement for Spurlock, who wasn’t exactly a ‘resident’ who paid ‘bills’. As an added benefit, the phones were cheap, disposable and pretty much untraceable as long as you kept getting new ones. He bought minutes at the counter in the convenience store, the smallest denomination possible, then headed out into the parking lot to make his call.